“Give you my honour,” returns Mortimer, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

“Miserable! Is that the way you do your duty?”

“Beyond an impression that he is to sit upon my knee and be seconded at some point of the solemnities, like a principal at a prizefight, I assure you I have no notion what my duty is,” returns Mortimer.

Eugene is also in attendance, with a pervading air upon him of having presupposed the ceremony to be a funeral, and of being disappointed. The scene is the vestry-room of St. James’s Church, with a number of leathery old registers on shelves, that might be bound in Lady Tippinses.